Ikea’s Smart Home Dares to Make Sense

THE “SMART HOME” has not yet distinguished itself. Sure, you might dim your lights with an app; you might even talk to your large appliances. But despite years of promised ubiquity, the connected home has yet to cleave with mainstream reality. It’s too expensive, too futzy, too filled with interoperability landmines. You know who can fix that? Ikea. In fact, it’s already started to.

Ikea’s current smart home lineup is limited to a handful of lighting products. Nothing so special about that. But the way Ikea has so far approached its Trådfri LEDs illustrates exactly how the furniture behemoth can light a path toward a generation of products that finally fulfill the smart home’s potential. They’re cheap. They’re easy. And most importantly, they’ll soon speak HomeKit, Alexa, and Google Assistant with equal fluency.

Mike Rawson

Mike Rawson has recently re-awoken a long-standing interest in robots and our automated future.
He lives in London with a single android - a temperamental vacuum cleaner - but is looking forward to getting more cyborgs soon.